


Honey and Wine

by Lindzzz, orphan_account



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: "Wait did she make newt a fucking incarnation of bacchus?", ALL OF IT, All of this is wrens fault, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, God!Newt and mortal!credence, M/M, May be mature if you squint, Modern AU, One Shot, The inevitable greek god au, Youre darn tootin i did
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 16:43:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8924524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lindzzz/pseuds/Lindzzz, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "Dionysus is represented by city religions as the protector of those who do not belong to conventional society and he thus symbolizes the chaotic, dangerous and unexpected, everything which escapes human reason and which can only be attributed to the unforeseeable action of the gods."You never felt doubt, until you looked into the eyes of a nervous, smiling British man wearing his strange, pagan amulets before he looks away and takes the leaflet from your lifeless fingers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> "The fuck are you two doing making Newt the antisocial nerd into Dionysus"
> 
> Listen. Listen....hear me out.
> 
> Anyway, Credence’s bit here is me, keep an eye out for widowing_powder's Newt.

 Your life is a monotony of grey and numbness, interrupted only by flashes of pain and fear.

You pray for God to speak to you, the way He speaks to your Ma, or so she tells you he does. Believing her and in the truth of His word is all you can do, because without it you feel like there’s nothing else but the world staring at you. And if He would speak to you, maybe you would understand things better.

So every day, you stand on the corner. You stand, and hold your leaflets praising His works and deeds, and pray that if you hand out enough of them you will feel something. Anything. A sign that everything you have lived has been worth something. The concrete at your feet is flat and grey, and if you keep looking at it you don’t have to see all the faces of people around you. People with different lives, who sometimes seem happy, despite not taking one of the leaflets. 

The concrete is the same from one day to another. Sometimes it is dark and wet, sometimes it is dry, and sometimes there are scraps of bright colorful papers marring the grey with memories of a passing celebration. But it doesn't change, not really.

You learn to recognize shoes of people who come by regularly. You recognize outfits or body shapes and, occasionally, you look up after the familiar legs pass to see the faces they’re attached to turned away.

There is one man, who comes nearly every day. He wears boots that have scraps of mud and grass on them no matter what the weather is like, pants rolled up above the tops as if he just came back from hiking the wilderness. When you dare to raise your eyes higher, you see vests that are a different color every day. The first time you look up, you see about five necklaces with strange, foreign looking charms and amulets, and a pattern of grapes and vines embroidered around the edges of a goldenrod yellow vest.

You don’t look up from the boots for two weeks after that. But then, you do look up. Because the amulets are still there even as he takes the same leaflet you’ve always had every other time he stops by. You hold the paper listlessly in your fingers, and always, always feel a strange and terrible thrill when you recognize the long fingers with smears of dirt on the knuckles when they reach and take it from your hand.

Sometimes, you wonder what it would be like if the fingers grazed yours as they gently took the papers. You wonder why sometimes there’s dirt, and why sometimes his fingertips are stained a sweet red. Once, he says ‘hello’ somewhere near the top of your bowed head. His voice is smooth and rough all at once, a British accent spoken softly as if pitched just for your ears.

You don't say hello back. Maybe you do. You don't remember. All you do remember is your heart seizing up and you nearly dropping all the papers clutched in your hands.

That time, he’s gone when you look up, but you watch a long limbed man in a blue coat and dirty boots walking down the street, his auburn hair catching the sunlight. 

You see him put the leaflet in the trash before he turns a corner, and you look down again.

Once, he pauses for a few moments after taking the leaflet, and you watch his fingers tapping on the paper held pinched in one hand.

“You have something in your hair.” He murmurs, and when his hand comes up by your temple, you smell honey and greenery and fresh soil and sunlight on his wrist with a sharper note that reminds you of Communion wine. His long fingers pluck into your hair, and you sway towards them, nearly crumpling when they pull away and drop a strange, broad leaf onto the papers in your hand.

You sneak the leaf home tucked into your shirt, feeling like it’s contraband when you take it to your room. For a week, you spend your nights holding it above your eyes and wondering why it still looks as fresh as if it was just plucked from a vine.

Your dreams are filled with leaves and honey, and the sound of his voice sighing your name. You wonder if this is what temptation feels like, and wonder why it feels more pure than the holiest Sunday rites.

There’s nothing special happening on the day that you look up.

The sun is out, but no more than normal. His boots have the same mud and plant matter on them, his hands look the same when they take the leaflet. The amulets still rest on his chest and his scarf is the same yellow and black bars.

But this time you look up. You look up and see his face. It blindsides you with the ordinariness of it. High cheekbones, freckles, an odd, crooked twist of a smile. His eyes, blue rimmed with hazel, delicately lined at the corners, meet yours for a second that makes your heart leap into your throat before they drop to the paper in his hand.

“Hello.”

You have never doubted before. Never doubted the words on the papers, because Doubt meant opening doors to the rest of the world. Doubt is dangerous.

You never felt doubt, until you looked into the eyes of a nervous, smiling British man wearing his strange, pagan amulets before he looks away and takes the leaflet from your lifeless fingers. There was nothing to doubt until you look up and see an ordinary man, while you also see danger and wildness and the vast, joyfully chaotic unknown.

He doesn't say a word when he leaves.

You follow him.

There’s nothing else you can do. Nothing you could ever do, but follow him. Your body will allow nothing else, and your legs are moving before you even think about following him. 

The city is grey, the leaflets are falling from your hands, and he’s a blaze of blue and red and green ahead of you. A shout is lodged in your throat, and you swallow it as you follow him from a safe distance.

You’re terrified that he will turn around and see you. You’re terrified that he won't.

Time seems to drift, you don't see the sun sink down. You only register that it’s darker outside when you follow him into the crowded house party in a neighborhood you don't recognize. For a second, you stop on the stairs, heart pounding. There’s music thudding through your bones and the sound of laughter. 

You think of all the warnings of debauchery and sin. The despair that you’re told is guaranteed after giving in to the physical and to the pleasures of the world.

But the man glides in through the door, and you follow.

He drifts through the party, and you think there’s nothing special about him. He doesn't stand out. He doesn't talk to anyone and no one seems to take any notice of him or you. 

But where he goes, people lean and ebb and flow around him and drift closer to him, as if he’s a magnet dragged above a pile of iron shavings. They glance at him as if they can't not, and then they look away again when he passes.

He settles at a table covered in cheap alcohol and mixers, coat tossed over a chair and shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows. No one talks to him, no one gives him a second glance as he dances his fingertips over the bottles and plucks out an amber whiskey. He finds the only glass tumbler on a table of red plastic cups, pours his drink, and watches the revelry.

You stay in a corner and watch him. You see a sort of sigh go through the throngs of people, and there’s more laughter, less shouting, more smiles and touches. When you look closer you see flashes of flowers twined in hair, of long pronged horns rising over people’s heads and flashes of the eyes of strange beasts.

But another look, and you see ordinary people in their own strange world of each other’s company. He sits at the table at the head of it all, lazily swirling his whiskey glass in one hand with his chin resting in the other, long fingers tapping against his cheekbone.

People drift about him. They lean towards him when they pour their drinks, they brush against him without glancing when they reach over to grab a bottle. But they don't talk to him. He doesn't talk to them. Every so often, his eyes light on someone and he’ll set his drink down, grab a cup, and mix a concoction.

It's a different potion for different people every time, and they take it from his long fingers only to glance in confusion at the cup as soon as they step away. He never looks up from the shakers and muddling in front of him, even when he holds the drink up for whoever he’s decided needs it.

You aren't aware of moving. You don't know how you come to sit next to him, just that you suddenly are with your scarred hands knotted in your lap. You feel like a fool, but when he glances over he smiles quietly, and it plucks at your soul like he physically reached in and twitched his fingers over harp strings.

“I was hoping you’d come.” He says softly, and you hear him clear over the music as if he breathed the words against your ear. You know he’s telling the truth.

His eyes slide away again, but he’s still smiling. There’s another glass tumbler in front of you filled with something that you throw back because that’s what people do at parties when they’re terrified. It burns and leaves the taste of nectar on your tongue.

“Who are you?” You ask. You don't hear your own voice over the music and shouting, but he tilts his head towards you with his eyes bright.

“Right now?” He asks, mouth curled in a private joke you don't understand. “Just Newt. Short for Newton. It’s what my parents named me. And you are?”

It takes you a few moments to answer, because you honestly thought he knew somehow. “Credence.”

“Credence.”

Your breath stops for a moment when he says it, and you sip the water that’s now in the glass you clutch to your chest. Newt is looking at his own glass, watching the whiskey spiral as he swirls it.

“You know, I used to get myself more involved in these things. Not that I’m not involved now, of course. But being the center of attention gets old quickly. And I find that this time around I don’t have the nerve for it. Odd, how things are different every time. But I think it’s better this way, in a way. Maybe. People are social animals. They’re supposed to enjoy each other.”

You don't understand. You’re afraid to ask. You get the feeling he’s babbling, but you have no idea why. He shakes himself a little from his reverie, and takes notice of you again with an apologetic flash of a smile.

“Why don't you tell me about yourself, Credence?”

You don't talk about yourself ever. People don't need to know. People don't have to know. You don't like answering why you still live at home, when your Ma’ terrifies you with her holy fury.

But now you talk. You whisper, and know he hears every word. You talk about your adoption, about the debt you owe God and Ma for the fact that you were saved. His eyes are on you the whole time, and yours are on your hands and the scars that criss cross them.

You say you doubt, that you fear, that you don't hear His word in your heart no matter how much you strain to listen in Church. You tell him about the rage that fills your lungs sometimes, and how it terrifies you as much as Ma’s voice does when it’s grave and quiet. Some nights, you scream into your pillow until your voice is hoarse from it, but ma prefers you silent, so she doesn't notice. The tears fill your eyes and he says nothing, but a thumb brushes them away and you know you’re in a confessional, sitting at homemade bar of a party full of strangers.

“Why do you stay there?” He asks, and from him the question isn't also an accusation. It’s soft and sad, and it’s the same question you ask yourself every morning.

“I have no where else to go. I don't know anything else.”

The hand that had brushed a tear away drops into your field of vision, fingers stained with grenadine and soil unfurl and stay held out in offering.

“Do you want to leave?”

You know he means the party.

You know he doesn't.

What can you do, but take the hand and look up when you say “Yes”?

You don't remember going home with him. You know it should terrify you, and you know it’s far past your curfew, you know Ma is likely furious this very second. But you walk down a gravel driveway to a small house tucked into the woods just outside the city, and your heart sings.

There’s equipment and odd cages everywhere, and he laughs at your confusion. Things get injured in the woods, he explains, and sometimes they need help because he never could stand to see something with life in it suffering. His eyes are on you when he says that.

Yours are on the expansive gardens where the smell of fruits and flowers fills your lungs outside. They're on barrels and tall stills inside that he says he uses to brew his own wines as a hobby. When he uncorks a bottle, muttering to both you and himself about culturing and distilling and exotic recipes from far away, the thick smell of honey and fruit fills the air like the memory of a heavy dream.

You sip mead, and for a second you see him gliding through a deep and wild forest, with grape vines twining through his hair and massive, strange beasts that vaguely resemble tigers winding around his legs like housecats. The sound of pipe music rings in your ears and honey wine is heavy on your tongue. Your blood pounds in every vein and artery, singing with the simple, physical wonder of life.

You blink, and you’re in the kitchen of a small, ordinary house by the woods. Newt is dressed in a plain rumpled shirt and vest, pouring himself a glass of wine with no strange beast, but an orange tabby arching against his shin. Your blood still thrums, and you can just barely hear the wind humming with distant pipes.

When he looks up at you, there’s a nervous smile again. You can't imagine what something like him could ever be nervous about, or why he would look at you that way.

“Are you alright?” He asks. You nod, and it’s true. You’ve never been alright before, but you are now. 

You’re alive. And you have spent so long agonizing over death and what could wait for you after it, that you never really felt alive before. It isn't the demonic, screaming descent into the physical that’s drawn onto your pamphlets with debauched people lost in their own gluttony and lust. It’s the cool glass in your hands, the lingering sweetness mixed with the burn of alcohol in your throat, the warm wood floors gleaming and the long, lean man watching you with a softly piercing gaze from across the room.

“Can I come closer?” He asks, voice a little lower, and you’re breathing yes with your being because that’s all you ever want right now.

He steps closer, right up to you, with the gentle lure of wildness in his eyes.

You kiss him.

What else could you do, but kiss him? What else, but curl your fingers against the back of his neck and feel him exhale just before you touch your lips to his.

You have been told what holiness is, what grace feels like on the soul. The lack of it ate you to your core until you taste it on his lips. It tastes like danger and abandon and honey spiked sharp with whiskey.

It feels soft and yielding under your palms, and you know this isn't the grace of the soul but of the entire self.

You don't know if you’re pushing or if he’s pulling. Wood creaks under your feet, and he’s letting you take. He’s gentle and vibrant and pliant as he lets you push him into the mattress and taste sunlight on his skin.

Some part of you feels the sin, or at least is aware that you should feel it. But there can't be sin when he’s sweet and patient as he guides your shaking, starving hands. There’s no shame when the sound of his laughter between breathless gasps of your name is the most heavenly music you’ve heard.

Later, when you’re lying against him, hot and shivering with the air on your sweaty skin and his lips pressed to your shoulder, you only feel a calm light washing through you. His arm is wrapped around your middle, and there’s an art in the way your fingers are tangled together and he presses against your back.

You feel freedom in every fiber of your soul.

The next morning, you try to find guilt and come up empty. There’s sunlight bright and plain on your skin, your clothes scattered with his on the floor, and your bodies tangled together in the soft bedding.

His lips brush lazily against your shoulder, and his voice is the barest whisper when he breathes “Do you want to stay?”

“Yes.” You breathe back. What else could you say, or want, but always yes?


End file.
